Saturday, February 20, 2021

Road Trip To Allegheny State Park (Bear Paw Trail)

On The Road Again

7:37

It looks like a fine Saturday morning (with a Lake Effect Snow Warning), still winter, still cold, the lake frozen and white.  It's 15º and the ice fishermen are already out because it's the weekend.  

Snowshoe Morning

Trail Head

Yesterday we broke the rules, the routine, the habit and took a road trip, a forty-five-minute drive to snowshoe the Bear Paw Trail.  We were up at the usual times and decided to be in no hurry to get on our way which was nice.  I finished the blog and we both showered before driving off. We were lucky with the weather, no snow either going or returning.  We arrived at the Art Roscoe Warming Hut at 11:15, a busy place as the parking lot was almost full.  It's a hut for cross country skiers, with heat and restrooms.  There are five or six trails set aside for cross country skiers, one for snowshoeing.  There are also trails for snowmobiles so it's been a busy area for the last three weeks.  We probably did not need our snowshoes because the snow on the trail was packed from other hikers.  We were out for two hours, a little over three miles.  


Stone Tower


We snowshoed along a ridge to the Stone Tower, then back along another ridge.  We ran into only one couple, a guy who said he works in Healthcare but did not get a Covid vaccination because he does not trust the government. Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of people around here that feel that way.  We stopped at the Stone Tower to have our lunch, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bananas, a nice pause in our tour.  We were not back to the car until after 1:00, the parking lot filled with cross-country skiers.  

Trail Marker

Families Sledding

We drove home the long way, past two of our favorite restaurants, the Horseshoe Inn and Nic N Inn before stopping at The Country Lane, on Rt. 62, just outside of Kennedy.  We have been there before and have liked browsing and the owners are nice people.  We were not tempted to buy anything although they have lots of neat things.  We didn't get home until 3:00 and we both collapsed on couches, worn out from the ride and snowshoeing.  Still, it was worth it.  I ended up taking a good hour nap, waking drowsy and lazy.  Evie felt the same way. 

Fortunately, dinner was already made, the leftover Greek chicken from Wednesday so Evie heated up the chicken and rice in the microwave, made a salad and we had dinner.  Yippee. We were excited to watch the much-discussed film, Nomadland on Hulu, based on the book by Jessica Bruder.  It was memorable, the best film we have seen in the past year.  Francis Mc Dermott, amazing as always, plays Fern, a woman in her sixties who has lost her husband, home, and job and is forced to wander the West, working part-time jobs, living in a van.  There's an honesty to Fern, to the film, as she meets similar nomads, forced by circumstances to live like this but also attracted by the freedom, the wanderlust,  The landscape as Fern moves from north to south is part of the joy of the film.  It made me want to get in my VW van and just go until I thought about living in a trailer, in the middle of a desert, working part-time at Amazon, or in the kitchen of Wall  Drug.  It's worth watching just to listen to one of the travelers she meets, Swankie, talk about her life.  It's heartbreakingly honest and sad. The film does not preach but it's not a feel-good movie because it visualizes the lives of millions of elderly, living in vans or trailers, working to survive on poor paying jobs.  Watch it!







No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...